261Arheološki vestnik 76, 2025, 261–284; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/AV.76.02; CC BY-SA 4.0
Izvleček
Arheologija Slovanov v zgodnjem srednjem veku ostaja razdeljena med raziskovalce, ki zanikajo migracije Slovanov, 
in tiste, ki materialno kulturo neposredno povezujejo z etničnimi identitetami. Ta članek premošča to delitev s prevre-
dnotenjem teoretskega okvira. V kritični obravnavi razvoja raziskav etničnih identitet v arheologiji izpostavi omejitve 
tako primordialističnih kot instrumentalističnih modelov. Namesto teh predlaga redefinicijo arheološke kulture kot 
politetično skupnost praks, ki so utemeljene v priučenih družbenih vedenjih. Ta okvir omogoča prepoznavanje etničnih 
identitet v arheoloških zapisih. Z uporabo tega pristopa na arheološki kulturi praškega kulturnega kompleksa pokažemo 
skupnost praks, ki so jo združevali jezik, bivanje, noša, gospodarstvo, družbeni odnosi in genetska povezanost. Članek 
torej potrdi, da so Slovani v zgodnjem srednjem veku obstajali tako kot arheološka kultura kot tudi kot prepoznavna 
identitetna skupina z močnim kolektivnim samozavedanjem.
Ključne besede: Slovani; arheologija; arheološka teorija; pozna antika; zgodnji srednji vek; etnična identiteta; arheološka 
kultura; habitus
Abstract
The archaeology of the ancient Slavs has advanced methodologically but remains divided between scholars who deny 
the Slavs’ migrations, and those linking material culture directly to ethnic identities. This paper seeks to bridge this 
divide by reassessing the theoretical framework for studying the ancient Slavs. It critiques the historical development of 
research on ethnic identity in archaeology, highlighting limitations in both primordialist and instrumentalist models. 
Instead, we propose redefining archaeological culture as a polythetic commonality of practice rooted in learned social 
behaviours. This framework permits identifying ethnic identities in the archaeological record without relying on texts. 
Applying this approach to the Prague-culture-assemblage archaeological culture, we demonstrate shared practices in 
language, housing, dress, sustenance, social relations, and genetic relatedness. Our findings confirm that the ancient 
Slavs existed as both an archaeological culture and a distinct identity group with strong collective self-awareness.
Keywords: Ancient Slavs; archaeology; theory; Late Antiquity; Early Middle Ages; ethnic identity; archaeological 
culture; habitus
The archaeology of the ancient Slavs, like archae-
ology in general, has made great methodological 
advances in the last two decades. For example, in 
the applications of computational (e.g., Štular 2022; 
Rihter 2023) and web-based analyses of cemeteries 
(e.g., Eichert 2021), applications of airborne LiDAR 
(e.g., Lozić 2021), focus on soil analyses (e.g., Štular, 
Lozić 2024; Magdič 2024) and exploitation of large 
archaeological data sets using machine-learning 
methods (Štular et al. 2022). In addition, geocom-
putational analyses are finally being applied to the 
archaeology of the Slavs (e.g., Magdič 2022). Ac-
cording to a recent scientific conference (Machaček, 
Hofmanova 2024), the focus of current research is 
on the subsistence using isotopes and lipids (still 
at an early stage, e.g., Machaček et al. 2024) and 
Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology
of the Ancient Slavs
Razmislek o etnični identiteti v arheologiji Slovanov
Benjamin ŠTULAR
262 Benjamin Štular
(ancient) DNA studies of human (e.g., overview in 
Lindstedt, Salmela 2020) and animal remains (e.g., 
Machaček et al. 2021). 
Unfortunately, unlike archaeology in general, the 
archaeology of the ancient Slavs has also become 
utterly polarised in its theoretical stance. On the 
one hand, there are researchers who uncondition-
ally reject not only the possibility of a migration 
of the ancient Slavs, but the existence of the Slavs as 
such. On the other hand, there are researchers who 
continue to use the toolset from the 19th century 
that equates ‘pots with people’. The aim of this article 
is to shed light on the archaeology of the ancient 
Slavs in its theoretical context and to bridge the 
gap in the search for a common path.
First, we briefly describe the theoretical develop-
ment in the 19th and 20th centuries and its current 
state in the 21st century. We consider the archaeology 
of the ancient Slavs in the context of the archaeol-
ogy and historiography of Late Antiquity and the 
Early Medieval Period. Only since the 1950s has 
the archaeology of the ancient Slavs embarked on 
a relatively isolated path (see below).
The second part of the article is devoted to the 
development of the theoretical framework, which 
seems to have stalled. The current framework is 
critically presented and a new framework, or rather 
an evolution of existing trends, is proposed.
Finally, the newly proposed framework is put 
into practice through the case study of the so-called 
Prague culture assemblage, or, as we define it, the 
Prague-culture-assemblage archaeological culture.
Although the article contains abundant refer-
ences, it was not our intention to provide a bib-
liographical overview of the archaeology of the 
ancient Slavs, as this has already been covered in 
several recent studies (e.g., Pleterski 2013; Živković 
et al. 2013; Šalkovský 2018; Kowalski 2019; Curta 
2020; Filipec 2020).
HISTORY OF RESEARCH
Grand narrative
The transformation of barbarian Europe in Late 
Antiquity and Early Middle Ages was, until World 
War II, overwhelmingly regarded as a phenomenon 
of the migration of peoples. The meaning of the 
terms ‘people’ or ‘tribe’ was taken for granted and 
understood as stable, permanent, and almost un-
changeable entities (e.g., overview in Olsen 2002, 
30–39). In the social sciences, this view is known 
as the primordialist model (e.g., critical overview 
in Eller, Coughlan 1993).
Migration was understood as the main process 
of change (e.g., Ratzel 1909), and peoples and 
tribes were, as MacEachern (2000, 370) puts it, 
understood as ‘caroming around the continent like 
culture-bearing billiard balls’. Along the lines of a 
good break at the beginning of a game of billiards, 
the Huns bounced off the Great Wall of China and 
broke through the Roman Limes, forcing numerous 
other peoples to migrate in the process. The rest of 
the Late Antiquity and Early Medieval history was 
merely a process of ‘clearing the billiard table’, with 
peoples and nations bouncing around until they 
settled in places where they were still to be found 
in the 19th century. That some peoples disappeared 
in this process was attributed almost exclusively to 
crushing military defeats.
Reconstructing the more distant past relied on 
archaeological and linguistic evidence and tended 
to be written up in terms of a succession of ever 
more advanced population groups. Best known 
were the large-scale Germanic migrations in the 
fourth and fifth centuries that supposedly brought 
down the western Roman Empire and established 
new linguistic and cultural patterns in the north 
(e.g., Bradley, 1888; Hodgkin, 1897).
Of great importance for the Medieval aftermath 
was the Slavic migration. Slavic origins were always 
hotly debated, but there was no doubt that from 
relative obscurity in the sixth century, the speakers 
of Slavic spread across vast tracts of Central and 
Eastern Europe over the next two hundred years 
(e.g., Niederle 1931).
This grand narrative of European history – or 
culture-historical epistemology, as is known in 
archaeology – was firmly nestled in the then ideal 
of once ‘pure’ national states. It has considered that 
migration and identity in the first millennium AD 
were inextricably linked for two reasons. First, the 
model assumed that human beings always came in 
compact and closed groupings of men, women, and 
children. Second, it assumed that there was a direct 
and tangible continuity between immigrant groups of 
the first millennium and similarly named nations of 
modern Europe (overview in Heather 2010a, 6–14).
Ethnogenesis
Following Barth (1969), the understanding of 
ethnic identity in 1960s shifted to the concept known 
in the social sciences as the instrumentalist model 
263Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology of the Ancient Slavs
or situational ethnicity. This model promotes the 
concept of dispersed identities and claims that people 
adopt different identities as the changing social 
circumstances require them to (e.g., Bentley 1987, 
25). Today, most social scientists consider identity 
to be a product of differentiation and exclusion, not 
an essential sign of unity (Knapp 2008, 32).
In archaeology, this change began in the context 
of the ‘new’ processual archaeology, which rejected 
migration as an explanatory model and replaced it 
with transformation and autonomous development 
from within. The New Archaeology, particularly the 
USA branch, did not concern itself with the study of 
identities (ethnic or otherwise), nor did it consider 
them as a subject of archaeology. Instead, it regarded 
them as a historical idiosyncrasy, the explanation 
of which is not the objective of archaeology (e.g., 
Adams, Van Gerven, Levy 1978; overview in Olsen 
2002, 45–51). Later, the post-processual concern 
with agency and the individual completed the shift 
toward the interactionist position (Knapp 2008, 63).
Thus, the deconstruction of the grand narratives 
began. By the 1990s, this became prevalent, particu-
larly in English-speaking academic circles (Heather 
2010a, 12). Currently, the persistent scepticism of 
using migration to explain cultural change is con-
sidered a processual anachronism (Knapp 2008, 51).
The deconstruction of the grand narratives in 
research of Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages 
took the form of focusing on new critical research 
on ethnic identities. Early medieval peoples were no 
longer defined on the basis of a common biologi-
cal descent but on the basis of belief in a common 
lineage, such as gentes. Gens may have shared a 
common language, a common law, and a common 
geographic origin, but the most important was a 
common myth about their origins. This myth was 
passed on by the leading aristocratic families in 
the form of genealogies about heroic ancestors. 
The elites and their stories functioned as nuclei of 
tradition (ger. Traditionskerne), which were crucial 
for the formation of the gentes (Wenskus 1961). The 
fundamental methodological consequence of the 
Traditionskerne approach was that ethnic identities 
were no longer perceived as rigid and unchanging 
but as fluid.
In the 1980s, this approach was refined and led to 
the entrenchment of ethnogenesis as a fundamen-
tal concept. Ethnogenesis describes the complex 
phenomenon of the formation of peoples and their 
identities. Origo gentis, the origin story of medieval 
people, became the key building block of ethno-
genesis. These mythical narratives were no longer 
considered just a passive source of information for 
modern historiography but as crucial to the forma-
tion of ethnic identity at the time of their creation 
(Geary 1988, 64–73; Wolfram 1988).
In the late 1990s, selected concepts from sociol-
ogy and critical theory were introduced into the 
study of ethnic identities, leading to a deconstruc-
tion of the ethnicity of Germanic gentes. Headed 
by the protagonists of the so-called ‘Vienna School 
of History’ (Reinhard Wenskus, Herwig Wolfram, 
Walter Pohl, etc.), the fundamental condition of 
early medieval ethnicity was now understood 
fluidly. The gentes could only define themselves in 
opposition to late Roman civilization. It was the 
choice of each gens between the dependence on 
the Roman model or its rejection that shaped early 
medieval Europe. Ethnic names preserved in the 
written sources became concrete only when political 
events or cultural expressions associated with one 
of these ethnic groups were recorded. Therefore, 
the long-term success of the gentes was possible 
only with a fluid – stable but flexible – form of 
organisation that was able to respond to the ever-
changing political reality. Under such conditions, 
historiographers were not expected to find direct 
and objective evidence of ethnic identity. Some 
artefacts recovered by archaeology may have been 
expressions or symbols of ethnic identity, but no 
artefact or group of artefacts was ethnically absolute 
(e.g., Pohl 1998a, 1998b).
There were also parallel theories, two of which 
had significant influence on the contemporary 
understanding of the Slavs. The first was the socio-
anthropological approach of Soviet anthropology. 
It based ethnicity on a stable core, called ethnos or 
ethnikos, which allowed for continuity over long 
periods of time (e.g., Bromley 1974; reviewed in 
Banks 1996, 17–24). The second was the so-called 
‘Toronto school’ (Walter Goffart, Andrew Gillet, etc.). 
It did not attach importance to the origo gentis in 
the formation of an early medieval gens. Instead of 
purely ethnic, it emphasised other types of identity, 
such as political, social, regional, etc. Importantly, 
key written sources, such as Jordanes’ Getica, were 
considered artificial constructions that were com-
pletely devoid of oral tradition and therefore had 
no informational value for historiography. In addi-
tion, it emphasised the role of the Roman empire 
in the formation of any early medieval gens (e.g., 
Goffart 1998; Gillet (ed.) 2002).
The development in archaeology in general 
was, to a large degree, parallel. First, the role of 
style as a means of social signalling including 
264 Benjamin Štular
communicating identity should be mentioned. 
Wobst (1977) was the first to suggest that style 
functions as a form of non-verbal communication 
both within and between groups, particularly in 
situations where direct interaction is limited; he 
equated ‘style with that part of the ... material 
culture which can be related to the participation 
of artefacts in processes of information exchange’. 
As style is a relatively costly means of communi-
cation, he believed that it is employed selectively. 
Wiessner (1983; 1985) challenged this view by 
noting that in identity displays, efficiency of the 
message is not paramount and that such displays 
are often extravagant. She also argued that stylistic 
messages need not be clear or uniform, and that 
a degree of ambiguity can actually increase their 
effectiveness. She emphasised the role of style in 
group cohesion and social signalling, grounding 
it in established theories of identity. She argued 
that style functions as non-verbal communication 
in which the performance of an action conveys 
identity in a certain way. In her approach, she 
suggested that stylistic differences arise more from 
social constraints on decorative choices than the 
context in which it was learnt. She distinguished 
between the emblemic style, which conveys a clear 
message about group identity, and the assertive 
style, which reflects personal identity. The em-
blemic style, thus, marked social boundaries and 
could be identified archaeologically.
About a decade later, Jones considered the dy-
namic and situational nature of ethnic identifica-
tion, which she understood as a constant process of 
making, unmaking, and sometimes disappearing. 
Thus, the construction of ethnicity was based on 
the shared subliminal dispositions of social agents 
that shaped and were shaped by objective com-
monalities of practice, i.e., Bordieu’s habitus. Ethnic 
identification involved an objectification of cultural 
practices in the recognition and signification of 
difference in contrast to others. Consequently, the 
cultural practices and representations involved in 
the signification of identity may vary across social 
contexts. Therefore, there was rarely a one-to-one 
relationship between representations of ethnicity 
and the full range of cultural practices and social 
conditions associated with a particular ethnic 
group. Under these circumstances, archaeology’s 
ability to trace ethnicity through time has been 
called into question (Jones 1997).
Brather (2000; 2002; 2008, 31–50) raised two 
questions. First, was there ethnicity in the Middle 
Ages? And second, can archaeologists discover it? 
The answer to the first question he provided was 
affirmative, but ethnic affiliation in the Middle 
Ages was not considered as important as it is 
today to citizens of national states. The second 
answer was largely negative. Brather perceived 
archaeology to be capable of detecting cultural 
traditions but not the details of their meaning, 
their spiritual background, or their significance 
for past mentalities and identities. Archaeology 
can observe the framework of the context in which 
archaeological finds occur and, at best, can gain 
an understanding of that context. However, there 
is no hermeneutic path to true understanding.
Current trends
In some parts of Europe, the grand narrative 
(see above) still holds, but the explanatory models 
have been greatly refined (e.g., Ciglenečki 2000; 
Pleterski 2013; Šalkovský 2018) and supported by 
modern scientific methods (e.g., Kowalski 2019). 
We agree with Watson (1995, 690) and Hu (2012, 
394) that these approaches remain a valid heuristic 
tool with valuable contributions to the empirical 
understanding of history.
The currently prevailing theoretical approach 
to ethnicity in Late Antiquity and Early Middle 
Ages, however, is built on the ‘Vienna School of 
History’ approach enriched by the criticism of the 
‘Toronto School’. From it emerged the current state 
of research (recent overview with references in 
Sekne 2019, 3–9). Ethnogenesis is understood as 
a complex process that leads to the formation of 
identity communities. Individuals are integrated 
into an identity community through an ‘Us-feeling’ 
that is the result of the individual’s subjective 
self-identification. The notion of ‘Us-versus-
Them’ is an integral part of human nature (e.g., 
Lévi-Strauss 1958; Reis, Gruzen 1976). Identity 
communities are therefore socially constructed 
and not biologically determined. Members who 
share a common identity do so in certain political 
circumstances to demonstrate a common interest 
or to emphasise the otherness of their group over 
another. Therefore, ethnic identity is a result of 
social interaction, not a prerequisite for it (e.g., 
Pohl 2013; Reimitz 2015). Accordingly, it cannot 
be detected through material culture recovered 
in archaeological record alone, but needs to be 
supplemented by a contemporary narrative written 
source, which is explicit, subjective, and ‘active’ 
(Pohl 1998c, 22–61).
265Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology of the Ancient Slavs
However, ethnic identity is only one of the 
possible identities, and it is difficult to distin-
guish between different identities, such as urban, 
religious, ethnic, military, etc.; they are interre-
lated, have a reciprocal relationship, and as such 
need to be studied as a whole. The formation of 
the social units referred to as ethnonyms in the 
written sources was the result of the coexistence 
and reciprocity of several different identities. 
Furthermore, the goal of historiography is not to 
define the type of identity, but to determine the 
context in which it became relevant (e.g., Pohl 
2010, 2014; Geary 2018).
Based on the above presented trends, we pro-
pose the hypothesis that this approach to ethnicity 
in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages is 
outdated for three reasons. First, it equates ethnic 
identity with a polity.
Second, it postulates that such a polity could 
only exist if it was recorded in a contemporary 
written source that was explicit, subjective, and 
‘active’. This means that such a polity could only 
exist in the realm of an administrative apparatus 
capable of recording, archiving, and executing 
policies. In Late Antique Europe, only such an 
apparatus existed within the former extent of the 
Roman Empire or possibly in a contact zone on 
the periphery of the contemporaneous Empire.
Third, this approach to ethnicity is based on the 
half-century-old instrumentalist model. However, 
the central postulate of the instrumentalist model 
has recently undergone significant development. 
Recent studies have revealed that sensitivity to the 
evaluation of others develops in the second year of 
a child’s life (Botto, Rochat 2018); in the third year 
of life, collective intentionality emerges and cultural 
knowledge is transmitted (Tomasello 2019); in-group 
members are strongly preferred beginning in the 
fifth year of life (Engelmann et al. 2013); and by 
age six or seven, children become responsible for 
self-regulating their beliefs and actions (Tomasello 
2019). This means that the social conditioning of the 
‘Us-versus-Them’ principle matures at a very young 
age. In essence, this fits the primordialist model 
better than the instrumentalist: whereas people 
are not born belonging to an identity group, they 
are raised into one in very early childhood. This 
makes the fluidity of social identity in adulthood, 
i.e. the ease with which identity can potentially be 
changed, much more challenging.
Regardless, in archaeology, Knapp (2008, 35–53) 
notes that both the primordialist and the instru-
mentalist model have proven unhelpful. Like 
historiographers, he does not believe that clear 
material expressions of past ethnic groups are liable 
to be found in archaeological record. Neverthe-
less, archaeological record often reveals complex 
patterns of overlapping distributions of material 
culture that have been repeatedly shaped and re-
shaped in different social contexts. Analysing the 
contextualised identities reflected in such records 
is within the realm of archaeological interpretation. 
If ethnic identities are self-characterising, then 
the parts of material culture that reflect social 
practices are part of the symbolic repertoire that 
constitutes their identity. Even if social practices 
cannot be directly equated with ethnicity, shared 
practices are likely to be involved in the forma-
tion of ethnicity.
One of the most recent archaeological definitions 
of ethnic identity comes from a study of qualitative 
factors in archaeological modelling (Barceló et al. 
2019, 63–65). The ethnic group is defined as a poly-
thetic long-term pattern of similarity and regularity 
that emerges through learning and transmission 
from one generation to the next. As such, it is a 
polythetic entity. Membership in a polythetic entity 
is based on a large variety of shared characteristics, 
but a single cultural characteristic is neither neces-
sary nor sufficient for membership. Therefore, the 
definition of belonging to an ethnic group can be 
derived from the definition of membership in a 
cluster in the science of data analysis: clusters are 
formed by grouping objects that are more similar 
to each other than to those in other groups.
The main goal of any cluster analysis is to 
define the characteristics of and threshold for 
this similarity. It follows that the goal of an ar-
chaeological study of ethnic identity is to measure 
the degree of clustering by revealing patterns of 
similarity. However, patterns are not sought only 
by the similarity between archaeological artefacts. 
Rather, similarity between behaviours, values, and 
social norms must also be addressed by using all 
available information: the product, the residues 
generated by the activity, wear traces, the context, 
the technology, etc. Once the data is compiled, 
the membership of an ethnic group cluster is to 
be calculated with a statistical comparison in a 
multiscale analysis of similarity patterns between 
different spatial categories, e.g., with a places-by-
behaviour evidence matrix.
Significant attempts to overcome the existing 
dichotomies in the approaches to the archaeology 
of ethnogenesis were made by Hu and Fazioli.
266 Benjamin Štular
Hu (2012) advocated for a methodology that 
integrates various theoretical perspectives to study 
the emergence, transformation, and dissolution of 
ethnic identities over time. This approach involves 
understanding social relationships and identity 
markers within specific historical and political 
contexts. By introducing a four-quadrant scheme, 
Hu assessed existing theoretical models, highlight-
ing the value of older concepts of ethnicity, such 
as primordialism, while challenging earlier as-
similation models that emphasise multidirectional 
agency. Thus, Hu provides a framework that allows 
archaeologists to conduct comparative studies of 
ethnogenesis while considering the fluidity and 
complexity of identity formation. A careful exami-
nation of material culture, alongside historical and 
social data, enables the tracing of ethnic identity 
development over time, making ethnogenesis a 
productive field for archaeological research.
Fazioli (2014) offers an alternative approach to 
the study of ethnicity in the material record. He 
critiques three major approaches to ethnicity in 
archaeology. The traditional culture-history ap-
proach, which associates artefact assemblages with 
particular ethnic groups, has been challenged for 
its simplistic assumptions. Interpretive approaches 
are too focused on symbolic communication 
through material culture. Sceptical approaches 
that question whether ethnicity can be reliably 
studied through archaeology argue that ethnic 
identity is too arbitrary and fluid to be discerned 
archaeologically. Fazioli proposes an alternative, 
relational approach that views social identity and 
material culture as interdependent, rather than 
treating artefacts as passive reflections of ethnic 
identity. He emphasises the importance of skilled 
practice and technological choices for understanding 
social identity, using the example of the produc-
tion of coarse-ware pottery in the south-eastern 
Alps during the transition from Late Antiquity 
to the Early Middle Ages. The study shows that 
examining technological choices — such as pot-
tery techniques — can reveal insights into social 
identity that are not evident in the written sources. 
Ultimately, Fazioli argues that focusing on com-
munities of practice and technological traditions 
allows archaeologists to move beyond simplistic 
ethnic categories and develop a more nuanced 
understanding of early medieval societies.
Finally, it is necessary to comment on the in-
teraction between historiography and archaeology 
in the field of Late Antiquity and Early Medieval 
identities. The historiography of our interest, often 
referred to as the ‘Vienna School  of History’, is 
geographically concentrated in Central Europe. 
When it interacted with archaeological theory, 
it indeed interacted with the culture-historical 
epistemology which largely still prevails in that 
region (e.g., Becker 2010). As a consequence, the 
achievements of interpretative archaeologies (e.g., 
Austin, Thomas 1990; Hodder (ed.) 2001; Hodder, 
Hutson 2003) have barely entered the discourse.
The Ancient Slavs
The ancient Slavs is a complex subject to discuss, 
and the complexity begins with the definition of 
the term. To a linguist, ‘ancient’ means something 
different than it does to an archaeologist. The term 
‘Slavs’ means everything from an ancient people 
who can be traced back to deep prehistory to a 
whim of a Byzantine scribe. In this text, we are 
focusing on Southeast and Central Europe in Late 
Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, and we use the 
term to describe the Early Medieval people who, 
among others, inhabited the said time and space. 
At this point, we use the term simply to tie in 
with existing research, to find shoulders on which 
to stand, so to speak. Our conclusions about the 
people and the concept of the ancient Slavs will 
be discussed below.
Until the end of World War II, the study of 
ancient Slavs methodologically differed little 
from other studies of Late Antiquity and the Early 
Middle Ages in Europe described above. In the 
aftermath of the war, however, all major Slavic 
populations, except for Yugoslavia, ended up on 
the Soviet side of the ‘Iron Curtain’. To outside 
observers (e.g., Curta 2002, 2020, 10–11; Heather 
2010b, 607), therefore, it may have seemed that the 
entire field of Slavic studies was united under the 
strong influence of the Marxist theory enforced 
by the Soviet Union. In reality, in archaeological 
theory outside the Soviet Union, Marxism rarely 
went beyond formal declarations in public speeches 
(Novaković 2011, 442–446). For example, in the 
1950s, the Archaeological Society of Yugoslavia 
provided its members with several dozen schol-
arships for travel to Germany, Italy, France, and 
Great Britain but none to the countries ‘behind 
the Iron Curtain’ (Novaković 2021, 414). The 
main influence on Slavic studies in Central and 
Southeast Europe remained the culture-historical 
epistemology of the German School (Novaković 
2012; Curta 2018).
267Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology of the Ancient Slavs
Slavic studies in the second half of the 20th cen-
tury were regional in nature. There were several 
academic circles which, at least according to the 
bibliography to which they referred, were relatively 
self-contained. The reasons for this, which are 
not our focus, were most likely simply due to the 
regional nature of the topics. These circles were: 
Germany (overview in Fehring 2014), Poland 
(overview in Jędrzejewska 2016), Czechoslovakia 
(overview in Gojda 1991), and Southeast Europe 
(overview for Eastern Alps in Štular, Pleterski 2018; 
the region was further subdivided).
A good example of how closed these academic 
circles were is Poland. Until recently, Polish research 
was focused on locating the territory of origin of the 
Slavs, the Urheimat. There were two hypotheses: The 
Urheimat was supposed to be either within present-
day Poland or outside, further to the east. The first 
hypothesis was called autochthonous and the second 
allochthonous (overview in Jędrzejewska 2016). 
Obviously, the location of Urheimat within Poland 
is autochthonous only to Poles. The terminology 
thus clearly reveals that this discourse took place 
exclusively among the Poles (cf. Pleterski 2013, 22).
Within the paradigm of the grand narrative and 
the culture-historical epistemology, studies focused 
mainly on the ethnogenesis of the ancient Slavs and 
the search for the Urheimat. Of course, there were 
tremendous advances in terms of archaeological 
data collected and in terms of methodology (Gojda 
1991; Parczewski 1991; Pleterski 1995; Dolukhanov 
1996; Kazanski 1999). By the mid-1990s, the im-
mutability of ethnic identity was being questioned, 
and the field was in the process of moving away 
from the perception of ancient Slavs as an ethnic 
group and instead viewing them as a language-based 
identity group (e.g., Pleterski 1995; Mamzer 1999). 
Pleterski (1995, 537), for example, defines the Slavs 
as a group of people who are held together by a 
common legal and ideological system (in Slovenian, 
‘skupina ljudi, ki jih je družil skupni pravno-ideološki 
sistem’), whereby religion, tradition and language 
are part of the ideological system. Material culture, 
e.g., specific types of pottery, are no longer part of 
the definition. Until the end of the 20th century, 
the development of the field, albeit on a different 
theoretical basis, was thus on a similar trajectory 
to that of ‘Western languages’ (see Pohl 2004 for 
the term, which is used to denote scholars educated 
in the global West).
The watershed event for the study of ancient 
Slavs were two books published in 2001. Reflecting 
the political reality in Europe after the dissolu-
tion of the Soviet Union and the fall of the ‘iron 
curtain’, the subject drew the attention of ‘Western 
language’ scholars. In the study of Late Antiquity 
and Early Medieval Europe at the time, the migra-
tion of the Slavs was the last grand narrative yet 
to be deconstructed.
The first of the two books can be described as 
the light approach. The Early Slavs (Barford 2001) 
presented the most comprehensive overview of the 
subject to date by a ‘Western language’ scholar. 
He admirably combined a thorough knowledge 
of research in Slavic-speaking countries with the 
methodological caution and scepticism of ‘British 
education’, but he did not offer a new global hy-
pothesis about the origin of the Slavs (Pohl 2004).
The second book was anything but a light 
approach. The Making of the Slavs (Curta 2001) 
unleashed the full force of the ‘Toronto School’ 
deconstructionism on the field, which was still 
firmly anchored in the grand narrative paradigm. 
Methodologically, deconstructive historiography 
was underpinned by the application of ethnographic 
analogy to the interpretation of archaeological 
information (Curta 2001, 325–334). While at the 
time, the deconstructive historiography method 
was cutting-edge, the anthropological analogy 
was largely outdated. The ethnographic analogy 
method, as used by Curta was introduced by 
Binford (1962; overview in Novaković 2003), but 
came under heavy criticism in the 1980s. Hodder 
(1983), for example, criticised this approach by 
emphasising the role of human agency, culture, 
and meaning.
Applying these methods, Curta was able to tran-
scribe Woolf ’s (Woolf 1998) ‘Becoming Roman’ in 
The Making of the Slavs and Geary’’ (Geary 1988, 
vi) ‘The Germanic world was... (a) creation of 
Roman political and military genius’ into ‘(Being 
Slav) was... an identity formed in the shadow of 
Justinian’s forts... ’ (Curta 2001, 350).
However, there are significant differences between 
the Germanic gentes and the ancient Slavs. One 
particularly significant difference is the more than 
200 million surviving speakers of Slavic languages. 
How could such a legacy be created by a loosely 
connected group with a fluid identity that came 
together only in response to temporary political 
circumstances and did not even bother to name 
itself? To clarify this, Curta (2001, 345–346) drew 
on a little-known hypothesis at the time (Pritsak 
1983; Lunt 1996, 1997; recent discussion in Boček 
2014): The Common Slavic language was used as a 
lingua franca inside and outside the Avar Qaganate.
268 Benjamin Štular
In the past two decades, this hypothesis has 
been comprehensively refuted (recent overview 
in Lindstedt, Salmela 2020) because it was flawed 
in its foundations. Namely, the first paragraph of 
the first chapter stated, ‘What remains unclear, 
however, is the meaning given to (Slavic) ethnicity 
(although the word itself was rarely, if ever, used) 
by scholars... ’ (Curta 2001, 6; brackets are original). 
With this phrase, the agenda to focus on ethnic 
identity was set without any deliberation. This was 
in line with the contemporaneous historiography 
of the ‘Vienna’ and ‘Toronto’ schools (see above). 
Also, it was and still is a legitimate and most com-
mon aim of similar studies of Germanic gentes. 
However, as shown above and highlighted in the 
quoted sentence, this was not a common topic in 
studies of the ancient Slavs at the time. By Curta’s 
own admittance, even the word ethnicity was rarely 
used in the research of the ancient Slavs.
The rest of the book was a straightforward execu-
tion of this agenda in three steps. First, the existing 
epistemology was deconstructed as inadequate for 
dealing with ethnic identity (Curta 2001, 6–14), for 
which it was never designed. Second, in line with 
concurrent studies of Germanic gentes, ethnic iden-
tity was defined as a polity, a political association of 
people (Curta 2001, 14–35, 60–61, 311–334). Third, 
it was unveiled that the Slavic speaking polities 
recorded in Byzantine texts first appeared ‘in the 
shadow of Justinian’s forts’ (Curta 2001, 335–350).
This result was predetermined by the method-
ology which defined the ancient Slavs as a polity 
interacting with the Byzantine empire. As indi-
cated above, such polity could only exist within 
or on the fringes of the Byzantine administrative 
apparatus. The emergence of Slavs defined as 
polity could only coincide with the emergence of 
the Slavic chiefs, who – by entering into a foedus 
– were recognised, documented, and cocreated as 
political counterparts by the Byzantines. Just as 
the Germanic gentes and regna could exist only in 
relation to the Roman Empire, the Slavic-speaking 
‘gentes and regna’ could exist only in relation to 
the Byzantine Empire. However, these polities were 
neither the totality nor the earliest ancient Slavs.
Another criticism of The Making of the Slavs is 
from a post-colonial perspective, which aims to 
strengthen the historiography of local and indigenous 
populations in comparison to global, imperial or 
colonial regimes (e.g., Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin 
1998; Young 2003). The study divulges a typical 
colonial view of a technologically and culturally 
inferior ‘indigenous’ population passively adopting 
a superior imperial culture. The surprising twist is 
that it was the Byzantine Empire that was under 
military attack and retreating from its Balkan 
provinces. The colonial stance is made clear in 
key inferences, including the book’s title, which 
assigned a passive role to the Slavs. Slavic political 
and military mobilisation ‘was the response to the 
historical conditions’ (Curta 2001, 343) and their 
group identity ‘was growing out of the historical 
circumstances’ (Curta 2001, 350). In the above state-
ments, the Slavs are considered as merely reacting 
passively to their environment, even while engaged 
in active and protracted military campaigns.
Regardless of its shortcomings, the hypothesis put 
forth in The Making of the Slavs deserves credit for 
initiating the deconstruction of the grand narrative 
surrounding the migration of the ancient Slavs. It 
also succeeded in shifting the focus towards the 
importance of methodology and the underlying 
theoretical framework in Slavic archaeology.
Unfortunately, this was not the main legacy of 
The Making of the Slavs, because the book is written 
in a manner that is resentful to those with different 
methods and/or interpretations. This sentiment is 
made very clear: ‘...the dominant discourse in Slavic 
studies, that of “expert” linguists and archaeolo-
gists, profoundly influenced the study of the early 
Slavs...’ (Curta 2001, 335).
Almost everyone who has studied the ancient 
Slavs before the 21st century is called an ‘expert’ in 
quotation marks, that is, a false expert. Even those 
who have long since passed away and whose only 
fault was that they lived and worked in a different 
century. As a result, almost all researchers active at 
the time were alienated from the potential benefits 
of the impressive methodological innovations in 
The Making of the Slavs.
This approach culminated in Curta’s recent 
book, Slavs in the Making, with one of its goals 
being ‘strategic, because it undermines the “text-
driven archaeology” practiced by advocates of 
the culture-historical approach...’ (Curta 2020, 4). 
Thus, rather than constructing a narrative about 
the past, the text aims to undermine those employ-
ing different methodologies. The book examines 
archaeological evidence from Slavic-speaking 
regions north of the Lower Danube, questioning 
the traditional association of this evidence with the 
Slavs. While the interpretative model aligns with 
the above-described earlier work (Curta 2001), 
suggesting that the emergence of (Common) Slavic 
cannot be explained by migration alone, it also ad-
dresses the broader issue of migration within early 
269Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology of the Ancient Slavs
medieval Eastern European archaeology. Notably, 
it advocates for a more nuanced interpretation of 
archaeological data concerning mobility.
The lasting effect is the divided academic field 
we experience today. On the one hand, there are 
‘Western language’ researchers who often lack access 
to the relevant archaeological data and information 
(as revealed by, e.g., Fusek 2004); on the other hand, 
there are researchers who have become alienated 
from the methodological apparatus developed by 
‘Western language’ researchers despite its strengths 
proven time and again in other areas of research.
This unfortunate development stands in stark 
contrast to the events surrounding the ‘Toronto School’ 
critique of the ‘Vienna School of History’ described 
above, which resulted in amicable methodological 
advances on both sides.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Archaeological Culture
Regardless of how one understands ethnic or 
any other social identity, one faces a conundrum. 
Given the complexity of identities, there is little 
hope that they can be explored using material 
culture alone, let alone working with the sparse 
remains of material culture that is archaeological 
record. Archaeology, however, is often the only 
science that has sufficient temporal depth to un-
derstand the historical trajectory (Knapp 2008, 
41–47; Barceló et al. 2019). It is a ‘one cannot live 
with it, one cannot live without it’ situation, then 
(it being archaeology).
We err on the ‘cannot live without it’ side, so we 
must look for the tools available. The literature in 
this field is enormous, and we need not detain us 
here (overviews in Knapp 2008; Hu 2012; Barceló 
et al. 2019). We will only briefly discuss the two 
approaches relevant to archaeological attempts to 
reconstruct identities that are most relevant to our 
study: Archaeological culture and habitus.
The concept of archaeological culture has shaped 
twentieth-century archaeology and is the theoretical 
and methodological backbone of culture-historical 
archaeology. It is most commonly traced back to 
Kossinna (1911) and Childe (1925), although it 
was long in the making before that. The concept 
was initially developed to link various elements of 
the archaeological record. Recurrent assemblages 
of types of artefacts, buildings, and monuments 
from a particular time and space, representing 
the remains of the material culture of a particular 
past human society, were initially understood to 
be a direct reflection of past ethnic groups (e.g., 
Jones 1997, 18–30; Roberts, Linden (eds.) 2011).
The concept remains an invaluable tool for ar-
chaeology because of its strong empirical content 
and the recurring issue of spatial patterning. This 
is especially true for studies that deal with large 
data sets and/or explicitly consider issues of scale 
and patterning (Roberts, Linden (ur.)2011; Barceló 
et al. 2019). Archaeological culture is still used as 
a tool to describe the characteristics of material 
culture, which may originate, for example, from 
chronology, technology, economy, social, or belief 
systems. Individual archaeological cultures, then, 
do not necessarily but may coincide with identity 
groups. It is a matter of interpretation on a case-
by-case basis (e.g., Klejn 1988 passim; Heather 
2010a, 17; Pleterski 2013, 10–11; Šalkovský 2018, 
18; Štular, Pleterski 2018, 9). Material culture is 
seen as a means of social communication, a strategy 
for structuring social relations and social actions 
(Geary, Veeramah 2016, 65). In addition, mate-
rial culture is no longer just passive reflections 
of social identities or ethnic groups, but includes 
the objects and technologies that people use, 
create, and interact with in their daily lives. It is 
not merely symbolic, but plays an integral part in 
the formation and negotiation of social identities 
through the choices made in production, use, and 
handling (Fazioli 2014).
One of the most recent, very well-researched 
theoretical considerations, which builds on Clarke 
(1978, 34–38), defines ‘“culture” in archaeology’ 
as polythetic (Barceló et al. 2019, 63–65). That is, 
as a type of classification in which membership 
is based on the commonality of a large number 
of characteristics. For this reason, it cannot be 
reduced to the presence of a selected cultural 
attribute in the archaeological record. A specific 
archaeological culture emerged over time when a 
group of individuals (agents) learned and shared 
the same behaviour that was produced and repro-
duced in a social group (structure). As a result, a 
commonality emerged in needs, motivations, goals, 
actions, behaviours, and mediating artefacts. These 
commonalities have left traces in the archaeological 
record in the form of patterns of similarity. These 
patterns can be anything from size, shape, and tex-
ture to materiality and placement; all attributes are 
subject to social influence and reflect a similarity 
between behaviours. Defined as such, archaeological 
culture can also reflect ethnic identity.
270 Benjamin Štular
In the research practice of ancient Slavs, archaeo-
logical culture remains an important concept (e.g., 
Pleterski 2013; Šalkovský 2018; Kowalski 2019). 
However, in keeping with the prevailing trends in 
Late Antiquity and Early Medieval studies outlined 
above, it is also often referred to as an anachronism 
from a long-gone phase of the discipline. However, 
stern rejection is mostly limited to theoretical 
considerations, and the concept continues to be 
used as an interpretative tool.
This dichotomy between rejection in theory and 
application in methodology can be clearly seen 
in what is the most frequent application of the 
concept of archaeological culture to the studies of 
the ancient Slavs: The Prague culture assemblage. 
For example, Pohl (2018) mentioned it twice as an 
anachronism (pp. 122, 142) and used it twice as an 
interpretative tool (pp. 145, 279). Heather (2010a), 
using the term ‘“Korchak”-type remains’, repeated 
the formula (anachronism: pp. 17, 21; interpretative 
tool: pp. 388-450). Curta (2001) described it five 
times as an anachronism (pp. 9, 10, 11, 14, 193) 
and used it nine times as an interpretative tool (pp. 
228, 231, 232, 236, 285, 287, 289, 307, 308). Later 
(Curta 2020, 4), the dichotomy was escalated to 
citing the undermining of the culture-historical ap-
proach as a strategic goal but naming ‘assemblages 
that have been attributed to the so-called Prague 
culture’ among the ‘key issues’ of the study of the 
ancient Slavs in Central and Eastern Europe. The 
list could be continued, but it is clear enough that 
the concept of archaeological culture remains an 
important tool in the study of the ancient Slavs.
Habitus
Researchers who consider the concept of ar-
chaeological culture to be an anachronism still have 
to grapple with the fundamental question of how 
material culture is associated with particular groups 
and particular situations. Many researchers of the 
Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages draw on 
Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the concept of 
habitus (e.g., Austin, Thomas 1990, 45–47; Jones 
1997, 84–105; Matthews 2001, 12; Hamerow 2002, 
50–51; Wickham 2005, 538–539; Dzino 2010, 35–39).
In his Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bour-
dieu (1977) developed a philosophy of action by 
constructing a fundamental relationship between 
the social trajectory of the agent – based on the 
incorporated dispositions or habitus – and the 
objective structures – specified as field. Or, as 
Bourdieu (1990, 53) puts it, ‘structured structures 
predisposed to function as structuring structures’. 
This is a reciprocal relationship: The social trajec-
tory that constitutes the habitus contributes to the 
structuring of the field, which in turn structures the 
habitus. With this, Bourdieu attempts to reconcile 
the influences of both the external social structures 
and the subjective experience on the individual.
In other words, the central issue of Bourdieu’s 
social theory is to clarify the process by which objec-
tive social structures are translated in the process of 
socialisation into embodied social structures, which 
in turn produce practices. These are consistent with 
the social structures that produced them and that 
serve to reproduce and change those same objec-
tive structures over time (Lizardo 2004, 393–394).
Doxa is an important concept in this theory. It 
describes the experiences and unquestioned truths 
with which the natural and social world is taken 
for granted and which appear as self-evident in a 
given society (Bourdieu 1977).
Habitus, though, is Bourdieu’s most influential 
concept. It refers to the deeply ingrained habits, 
skills, and dispositions that people possess as a 
result of their life experiences. It is the physical 
embodiment of cultural capital. As such, it extends 
to taste for cultural objects such as art, clothing, 
food (Bourdieu 1977), and by association, to jewel-
lery, pottery, and housing. However, taste is linked 
to social position or, more precisely, it is an act of 
social positioning (Bourdieu 1979). Habitus is used 
to describe how collective experiences are embod-
ied in people’s rational but unconscious judgments 
about their environment. These judgements are the 
building blocks of the collective code that makes up 
a culture (Vilhjálmsdóttir, Arnkelsson 2013, 582). 
Habitus serves to unconsciously shape what people 
are and thus can contribute to the emergence of 
ethnic differences (Knapp 2008, 47).
The habitus has always been a mysterious entity 
capable of much conceptual and theoretical work, a 
kind of theoretical deus ex machina. This is at least 
partly due to the conceptual density of Bordieu’s 
writings (Lizardo 2004, 381–383; Labari, Chiousse 
2022), which allows for a wide range of interpreta-
tions. Bourdieu has been criticised for his alleged 
economism, reductionism, or determinism, but this 
criticism is based on a misinterpretation of Bour-
dieu as a theorist of agency and structure. Today, 
habitus is understood as Bourdieu’s version of a 
socially generated cognitive structure composed of 
systems of bodily operations that produce practical 
action in the world (Lizardo 2004). However, his 
271Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology of the Ancient Slavs
phenomenological solutions to cognition, agency, 
and reflexivity of social action are currently being 
reassessed (Pula 2019).
In other words, the theory of practice is still a 
valid conceptual tool for understanding how social 
structures are implemented in the process of so-
cialisation and how they produce practical action. 
However, does this make it suitable for the study 
of Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages?
The answer is an ambiguous ‘yes, but... ’ The com-
plexity involved in engaging the theory of practice 
in addressing identity has limited the number of 
informed studies (Knapp 2008, 65). An excellent 
example of an informed study is the work on the 
interactions between the Western Slavs and the 
inhabitants of the South Scandinavian island of 
Bornholm. The study analysed the manipulation 
of the habitus through the use of material culture 
to show how members of different networks and 
groupings were able to pursue their goals and motiva-
tions. However, the study was only possible because 
of the specificity of the historical situation and the 
archaeological record (Naum 2006). In most cases, 
the historical situations and/or available sources do 
not allow the researchers to fully engage with the 
theory of practice.
Knapp (2008, 47) raised another concern for the 
application of the theory of practice in the archaeol-
ogy of ethnic identity. Habitus is constantly repeated 
and reaffirmed through human action, whether or 
not ethnic identity is altered. Habitus forms a link 
between the subjective internal (emic) experience 
of ethnic identity and the objective external (etic) 
social context. An archaeological reading of the 
situation is somewhat different. If archaeologists 
are to identify conscious and unconscious practices 
that reflect and feedback on the realm of habitus, 
they must examine similarities and differences on a 
smaller scale than that of social groups. Archaeology 
must also consider individuals. This point is also 
well illustrated by the Bornholm example.
The complexity of the theory of practice leads to 
further problems. For example, the term habitus is 
sometimes mistakenly used as a direct substitute 
for the concept of archaeological culture (e.g. by 
Rummel 2003). More often, however, the concept 
of habitus is used in isolation from the concepts of 
field and capital, which is inconsistent with Pierre 
Bourdieu’s theoretical framework. For example, 
Dzino (2010, 211–218) uses ‘cultural habitus’ merely 
as a descriptor for shared cultural traits or practices 
perceived by outside observers, thus reducing the 
habitus to a static set of cultural characteristics. This 
interpretation overlooks the essential relational and 
dynamic aspects of habitus. Pohl (2018, 344–352) 
is even more reductional: Habitus is equated with 
observable cultural habits or traditions, such as the 
inclusion of grave goods or the wearing of belts. 
While these practices are significant, the text does 
not situate them within a broader analysis of the 
social structures (field) or the types of capital. In 
essence, both authors reduce habitus to a description 
of collective customs, detached from the structural 
and relational dimensions that are central to Bour-
dieu’s theory. This misrepresentation neglects the 
complexity of how habitus functions within the 
nexus of field and capital to shape and be shaped 
by social practice. As a result, an agent is inevitably 
turned into a passive observer.
The isolation of the habitus is most devastating 
when it is applied to the context of ethnic identity, 
which, as used in the archaeology of Slavs, refers to 
distinctions between different groups on a horizontal 
level. However, the theory of practice was developed 
to study vertical social structures, for example, the 
influence of social class on the French school system. 
La distinction is a way in which actors in a social 
field try to distinguish themselves vertically from 
others. In this process, the field is the horizontal 
element that refers to social structure, while the 
habitus stands for vertical socialisation.
This was not lost on Pohl (1998b, 5–6), who 
further comments: ‘But at a closer look, ethnic 
identities had a lot to do with status in the regna. 
Being a Goth or a Frank meant to establish a claim 
of superiority over the Roman population, and 
over the members of other ethnic networks risen 
to power within the framework of the late Roman 
res publica.’
What does this mean for the study of Late An-
tiquity and Early Medieval ethnic identities? Even 
when applied in all its complexity, the theory of 
practice is more likely to lead to the identification 
of vertical rather than horizontal social structures, 
i.e., to social class (for example, warrior) rather than 
to ethnic identity (for example, Lombard). When 
the concept of habitus is applied in isolation (see 
above), this is almost inevitable.
Pohl’s astute and all-important observation was 
delivered as a brief commentary and, it seems, 
escaped most practitioners of the theory of prac-
tice in the decades that followed. This often led to 
identifying vertical social class rather than ethnic 
identities (e.g., Dzino 2010), leading to even more 
confusion in identifying the group identity known 
to modern researchers as ancient Slavs.
272 Benjamin Štular
Archaeological Culture or Habitus?
Which concept is therefore best suited to modern 
archaeology? We consider the theory of practice 
unsuitable because it is applicable only to certain 
historical situations and certain archaeological 
records and often cannot be applied at the scale 
of a social group. The modern definition of ar-
chaeological culture is better positioned, but it 
needs to be redefined.
For the purposes of this study, we define the 
archaeological culture based on the above discus-
sion (Bourdieu 1990; Knapp 2008; Štular, Pleterski 
2018; Barceló et al. 2019) as follows:
A specific archaeological culture emerged over 
time when learned behaviour was produced and 
reproduced in a social group. As a result, a polythetic 
commonality of practice developed that was both 
influenced by and had influence on this learned 
behaviour. The commonality of practice may or 
may not have been reflected in the material culture 
which is embedded in the archaeological record.
People who lived an archaeological culture were 
united in a functional group to achieve a goal (for 
example, to procure raw materials). Relationships 
within the group were organised around practi-
cal interest (for example, to sustain an exchange 
network). As a rule, one became a member of the 
group due to social conditioning at a very young age 
(in essence, was born into a group) or voluntarily 
joined it in adulthood due to common interests. 
Once a member, one felt a sense of belonging to 
the group and used the group as a standard for 
evaluating oneself and one’s behaviour. In social 
science, such a group is classified as a secondary 
group, a relational group, and an in-group.
Where the commonality of practices was reflected 
in material culture, it can be detected in the archaeo-
logical record in the form of polythetic patterns of 
similarity. Therefore, a particular archaeological 
culture is defined by the commonality of a variety 
of characteristics (for example, the Prague cultural 
assemblage) and cannot be reduced to a single 
attribute (for example, the Prague-type pottery).
An archaeological culture represents a set of 
material culture traits associated with a social iden-
tity group. It can correspond to an ethnic identity 
group if independent evidence indicates that the 
shared material practices are characteristic of that 
specific ethnic group. However, such a correspon-
dence can only be established using information 
beyond material culture, such as contemporary, 
explicit, subjective, and ‘active’ written sources 
that explicitly link these practices to the ethnic 
identity in question.
Regardless, although commonality of practice 
cannot be directly equated with ethnicity, shared 
practices reflected in archaeological culture likely 
participated in the formation of ethnicity. In other 
words, archaeology alone can provide insight into 
ethnic identity groups but not in its totality.
CASE STUDY: ETHNIC IDENTITY
OF THE ANCIENT SLAVS?
Horizontal distinction:
Utigurs, Kutrigurs, and Slavs
In this section, we will apply the theoretical 
framework developed above to the archaeology 
of the ancient Slavs by examining the identity of 
the ancient Slavs and the people who lived the 
Prague-culture-assemblage archaeological culture. 
The latter term is partially a pleonasm and is a 
mouthful; the term is not intended for general 
use, but we use it in this article for clarity.
The earliest written insight into the selfhood of 
the ancient Slavs comes from the Lower Danube 
region in the sixth century. This was a contact zone 
between the Byzantine Empire and the ‘barbarians’. 
The source we are interested in describes the Utig-
urs (also Utrigurs) and Kutrigurs (also Cutrigurs). 
These were two Turkic-speaking nomadic polities 
with a common origo gentis (granted, not origo 
gentis sensu stricto); they occupied the Pontic-
Caspian steppe in the sixth century, the Utigurs in 
the east and the Kutrigurs in the west. The latter 
repeatedly attacked the Byzantine Balkan provinces, 
for example, in 558/9 possibly in alliance with the 
neighbouring Slavs. In 559, Justinian responded 
by inducing the Utigurs to attack the Kutrigurs a 
second time. The ensuing armed conflict nearly 
resulted in mutual annihilation, but the remnants 
of the Kutrigurs (and possibly the Utigurs) were 
later absorbed into the Avar Qaganate (e.g., Golden 
1992, 98–104; 2011, 139–141; Syrbe 2012).
A potentially corresponding archaeological cul-
ture in the steppe phase is hardly known (Dimitrov 
1987). Kutrigurs of the Avar phase are said to be 
detectable in certain graves (e.g., Zábojník 2007; 
Jarak 2016), and attempts have been made to map 
the corresponding archaeological culture (Stadler 
2010, 127–128, Fig. 26).
A contemporary account of Menander Protector 
– a Byzantine historiographer known as a reliable 
273Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology of the Ancient Slavs
source inclined ‘to purism’ (Blockley 1985, 1–33) 
– informs us of diplomatic correspondence that 
in 559 took place between Emperor Justinian I 
(527–565) and Sandilkh, the Quagan of Utigurs 
(Menander, ed. Blockley 1985, fr. 2.).
In the search for a general definition of ethnic 
identity, Pohl (1998c, 17) discussed this example 
among several others that contain first-hand de-
scriptions of ethnic identity characteristics. His 
conclusion was that depictions of ethnic identity in 
Late Antiquity and Early Medieval sources varied 
from case to case. We agree with this general con-
clusion, but we are interested in the specific case 
of ethnic identity in the sixth century Danubian 
contact zone. Thus, it seems appropriate to revisit 
the Menander’s text:
‘Justinian added in his messages to Sandilkh 
that if he destroyed the Kutrigurs the Emperor 
would transfer to him all the yearly tribute-monies 
that were paid by the Roman Empire to Zabergan. 
Therefore, Sandilkh, who wished to be on friendly 
terms with the Romans, replied that utterly to 
destroy one’s fellow tribesmen was unholy and 
altogether improper, “For they not only speak our 
language, dwell in tents like us, dress like us and 
live like us, but they are our kin, even if they fol-
low other leaders. Nevertheless, we shall deprive 
the Kutrigurs of their horses and take possession 
of them ourselves, so that without their mounts 
they will be unable to pillage the Romans.” This 
Justinian had asked him to do’ (Menander, ed. 
Blockley 1985, fr. 2.).
There is much to unpack in the above quote 
and it can be presented in three points. First, 
the Utigurs lived like the Kutrigurs, and both 
were fellow tribesmen; other sources also tell us 
that Kutrigurs were well informed about their 
neighbours (Szmoniewski 2010, 66) and were 
occasional allies of the Slavs (Syrbe 2012, 297). 
From this context, we can deduce that Utigurs, 
Kutrigurs, and Slavs – as well as Antes and Ge-
pids, who are not of interest here – were interact-
ing peer-polities in the sixth century Danubian 
contact zone. Sandilkh’s words thus address the 
generally accepted criteria by which the Utigurs 
distinguished themselves from others, including 
the Slavs, and vice versa.
Second, the horizontal distinction (i.e., the hori-
zontal distinction sensu Pohl and Reimitz (eds.) 
1998) rather than Bourdieu’s vertical la distinction), 
or in this case, the lack thereof, was described in 
terms of four commonalities of practice: language 
(they ... speak our language), housing culture (they 
... dwell in tents like us), dress (they ... dress like us), 
and sustenance (they ... live like us). In addition, 
a network of social relations (possibly including 
genetic relatedness) was listed and underpinned 
with calling the Kutrigurs fellow tribesmen. The 
context of the statement is a clear indication that 
the list of commonalities was exhaustive. Utigurs 
were approached by Byzantines as an independent 
polity, but it was in Sandilkh’s interest to establish 
sameness with Kutrigurs by citing a list, i.e., he 
was using the rhetorical device of repetition. He 
described the sameness in three different ways: 
fellow tribesmen, four commonalities of practice, 
and kin. It can thus be inferred that the list of the 
commonalities of practice was as exhaustive as 
Sandilkh was able to produce.
Third, the ‘Us-versus-Them’ distinction between 
the Utigurs and the Kutrigurs was clearly expressed: 
they followed different leaders. This time, it is in 
Sandilkh’s interest to establish the distinction, for 
his rule rested on it. The only difference he cited 
was political leadership.
If we apply the methodology of the ‘Vienna 
School of History’ described above to the Utigurs 
and Kutrigurs, we arrive at the interpretation that 
they were separate ethnic identities (origo gentis, 
named political leader with a title, recognised as 
an entity by Byzantines, recorded as an entity in 
a contemporary, explicit, subjective, and ‘active’ 
written source), although it is highly unlikely that 
the distinction could be detected in archaeological 
record (cf. Dimitrov 1987).
Based on this: Were the Utigurs and the Kutrig-
urs separate ethnic identities or were they just two 
polities with the same ethnic identity? This is not a 
question of history (i.e., events taking place in the 
sixth century) but a question of historiography (i.e., 
the theoretical underpinning of a modern research).
In conclusion, we argue three things.
First, Utigurs and Kutrigurs were a single ar-
chaeological culture and hence a single second-
ary, relational and in-group of people. They had 
the same ethnic identity sensu Childe (i.e., in the 
tradition of culture-historical epistemology) but 
not sensu ‘Vienna School of History’.
Second, through a peer-polity interaction, a 
very similar, if not identical, horizontal distinction 
was valid throughout the sixth century Danubian 
contact zone. The secondary, relational and in-
group of people known to modern science as the 
ancient Slavs therefore distinguished themselves 
from the proverbial others by language, housing 
culture, dress, sustenance, and a network of 
274 Benjamin Štular
Fig. 1: An analysis of 1105 archaeological sites in the Eastern Alps, dated to the period between 400 and 1100 CE, has 
demonstrated migrations (Štular et al. 2022). Above: The entire area of the original study with the selected study area 
framed. Below: Key time slices from the emerging hot-spot analysis for the selected study area. Shades of red represent 
an above-average density of archaeological sites, shades of blue represent a below-average density. The depopulation 
after 450 CE stands in stark contrast to the repopulation after 500 CE; archaeological sites in 450 CE are located in the 
Roman city of Poetovium, and sites after 500 CE belong to the Prague-culture-assemblage archaeological culture (open 
access raw data sources used: EU-DEM v1.1, https://land.copernicus.eu; OpenStreetMap, https://www.openstreetmap.org).
Sl. 1: Analiza 1105 arheoloških najdišč v Vzhodnih Alpah, datiranih v obdobje med letoma 400 in 1100 n. št., je 
dokazala migracije (Štular et al. 2022). Zgoraj: območje analize z izbranim študijskim območjem v okviru. Spodaj: 
ključni časovni prerezi iz analize nastajajočih vročih točk za izbrano študijsko območje. Odtenki rdeče predstavljajo 
nadpovprečno gostoto arheoloških najdišč, odtenki modre pa podpovprečno. Depopulacija (podpovprečna gostota) 
po letu 450 n. št. je v očitnem nasprotju z repopulacijo (nadpovprečno gostoto) po letu 500 n. št.; arheološka najdišča 
datirana okoli leta 450 n. št. ležijo v rimskem mestu Poetovium, najdišča po letu 500 n. št. pa pripadajo arheološki 
kulturi praški kulturni asemblaž (uporabljeni viri neobdelanih prostorskih podatkov z odprtim dostopom: EU-DEM 
v1.1, https://land.copernicus.eu; OpenStreetMap, https://www.openstreetmap.org).
275Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology of the Ancient Slavs
social relationships (possibly including genetic 
relatedness).
Third, the archaeological tool for detecting and 
studying the horizontal distinction between such 
groups is archaeological culture as defined in the 
previous section.
All the above inferences apply whether we un-
derstand the letters summarised by Menander the 
Guardsman as a factual account (i) or as a more 
(iii) or less (ii) imaginative invention. It reflects 
the first hand understanding of the horizontal 
distinction between Utigurs, Kutrigurs, and Oth-
ers that existed in the Lower Danube region in 
the mid-sixth century. The only difference is, 
whether this is the understanding of Sandilkh 
(i), Justinian’s court (ii), or Menander (iii). From 
the perspective of the archaeology of the ancient 
Slavs, this divergence is irrelevant.
Prague culture
assemblage
This definition of horizontal distinction can be 
applied to the Prague culture assemblage. Known 
in the past as the Prague (archaeological) Culture, 
it was identified in a wide area over what are now 
the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Ukraine, 
Croatia, and Slovenia. Its main feature is a type 
of handmade pot without a pronounced shoulder 
and with a short vertical rim. Other characteristic 
elements are the location of dwellings near rivers, 
unfortified settlements with sunken-floor build-
ings arranged in a semicircle and furnished with 
stone ovens, cemeteries with a small number of 
cremations in urns or in simple pits. However, all 
elements rarely occur together. Modern studies 
moved beyond observing merely the pottery and 
characterise it as having distinct housing culture 
(buildings and domestic pottery), sustenance (de-
fined indirectly by ecological niches and material 
culture), and dress (the materials used to make 
dress and some dress accessories) (e.g., Profantová 
2012; Profantová and Profant 2020).
The Prague culture assemblage is the key to 
understanding the expansion of the ancient Slavs 
in the sixth century. In accordance with our frame-
work, it construes an archaeological culture that 
reflects a secondary, relational and in-group of 
people that were defined by and at the same time 
have defined the material culture retrieved in the 
archaeological record. However, it is by definition 
not a sufficient source to define the Slavs as an 
ethnic identity sensu ‘Vienna School  of History’, 
as there are no relevant written sources.
This can be built upon by further archaeologi-
cal analysis. One such analysis recently examined 
an archaeological Deep Data set (Štular, Belak 
2022) using a machine-learning method called 
time-series clustering and a geospatial analysis 
called multiscale emerging hot spot analysis. The 
study has securely demonstrated two physical 
migrations in the Eastern Alps between c. 500 
and c. 700 CE (Štular et al. 2022). The material 
culture of the archaeological sites belonging to 
the first of the two migrations, located in what is 
now North-eastern Slovenia and was at the time 
on the Western fringes of Pannonia (Fig. 1), has 
been defined as a Prague culture assemblage and 
securely dated to the mid-sixth century (Pavlovič 
2015, 2017).
Pertinent to the broader issue of the ancient Slavs 
is the following conclusion of the study: ‘Based on 
the convergence of evidence from archaeology, 
linguistics, and population genetics, we define 
the immigrants as Alpine Slavs who were speak-
ers of Slavic and shared specific “Slavic” ancestry’ 
(Štular et al. 2022, 13–14). So, at least in this 
particular case, the people who lived the Prague-
culture-assemblage archaeological culture shared 
not only housing culture, dress, and sustenance, 
but also language and genetic relatedness and 
thus a network of social relations. This conforms 
exactly with how contemporary sources described 
the horizontal distinction between Kutrigurs and 
Utrigurs on the one hand and Slavs on the other 
hand in the sixth-century Lower Danube region. 
In the particular case of the sixth-century North-
eastern Slovenia, then, archaeology is able to 
provide direct evidence for the ethnic identity of 
a group of ancient Slavs as defined by the concept 
of archaeological culture.
CONCLUSION
Research on the ancient Slavs in the 19th cen-
tury, and on Late Antiquity and the Early Middle 
Ages in general, has fixated on migration and 
ethnic identity. Even in the 21st century, this re-
search agenda has changed only superficially. The 
deconstruction of the grand narratives over the 
last six decades has been based primarily on the 
deconstruction of the concept of ethnic identity 
and, more or less as a collateral damage, on the 
tabooing of migrations.
276 Benjamin Štular
The fixation on identity, ethnic or otherwise, 
makes sense for historiography, which is directed 
to this topic by its sources. However, making it the 
(sole) preoccupation is ill-suited for archaeology, 
as the inference from material culture to identity 
is seldomly achievable. Archaeology of the ancient 
Slavs has therefore been sidelined by historiography 
and, more recently, by population genetics, if one 
goes by the most cited publications (e.g., Pohl, 
Reimitz 1998; Curta 2001, 2020; Kushniarevich et 
al. 2015; Geary, Veeramah 2016; Pohl 2018; Gokcu-
men, Frachetti 2020; Malyarchuk, Derenko 2021).
However, this need not be the case if archae-
ology refocuses on the study of archaeological 
culture as redefined above. We have applied 
this theoretical framework to demonstrate the 
horizontal distinction of the people who lived the 
Prague-culture-assemblage archaeological culture. 
They were a secondary, relational and in-group 
of people who (horizontally) distinct themselves 
from the proverbial others by language, housing 
culture, dress, sustenance, and a network of social 
relations including genetic relatedness.
This is an archaeological definition of the an-
cient Slavs in the specific context of the mid-sixth 
century, but it has some general connotations. The 
most important is that the ancient Slavs existed 
as an archaeological culture and as an identity 
group in the sense of our framework. These people 
certainly had a more substantial collective self-
awareness than that of a loosely connected group 
with a fluid identity that came together only in 
response to temporary political circumstances and 
did not even bother to name itself.
In conclusion, the archaeology of the ancient 
Slavs that interests us needs to free itself from the 
unproductive debate about identity as defined by 
the social sciences and focus on the study of the 
past within the realm afforded by the archaeologi-
cal record. It should focus on the what, the when, 
the where and, if available knowledge permits, 
the why. The who, as defined by modern social 
sciences, is, in our opinion, outside the realm of 
the archaeological record. However, the approach 
outlined makes the archaeological who much more 
substantial and relevant than it has been.
EPILOGUE
Modern historiography recognises its own in-
ability to know the past objectively. The past is 
not discovered but created, represented by his-
toriographers, who are not isolated observers of 
the past but participate in its creation (Munslow 
2001, 165–177). Or, in the words of popular culture 
(Gaal Dornick in Apple TV series Foundation, 
s1e9, 2021):
‘Ask a historian “What was mankind’s greatest 
invention?”
Fire? The wheel? The sword? I would argue it’s 
history itself.
History isn’t fact. It’s narrative. One carefully cu-
rated and shaped. Under the pen strokes of the right 
scribe, a villain becomes a hero, a lie becomes a truth.’
Any narrative about the past is, therefore, as 
revealing about the time it describes as it is about 
the time in which it was created. Just as nineteenth-
century researchers took for granted the existence 
of a strong and immutable ethnic identity because 
of their personal worldview, twenty-first-century 
researchers question it because of our worldview.
We concur with Barceló et al. (2019, 58): Yes, 
the manner in which ethnic identity is expressed 
depends on the circumstances. However, ethnic 
identity has an inseparable historical component. If 
its determination depended solely on the subjectivity 
of the individual and was entirely situational and 
forever changing, it would be a useless categorisa-
tion. We cannot accept a notion of ethnic identity 
that is derived only from what people believe or say 
they believe. To affirm this would be to give carte 
blanche to all forms of ethnic cleansing expressed 
through political interests that pervert the way a 
human community has historically been constructed.
When it matters in the future, the archaeological 
who must be better able to fend off falsifications 
of history than the who we can muster today.
277Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Archaeology of the Ancient Slavs
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281Razmislek o etnični identiteti v arheologiji Slovanov
Arheologija starih Slovanov je, podobno kot 
arheologija na splošno, v zadnjih dveh desetletjih 
dosegla velik metodološki napredek. Uporaba 
naprednih analiz grobišč z digitalnimi (npr. Rih-
ter 2023) in spletnimi orodji (npr. Eichert 2021), 
zračnega laserskega skeniranja oz. LiDAR-ja 
(npr. Lozić 2021) ter geokomputacijskih metod v 
arheologiji Slovanov (npr. Magdič 2022) postaja 
vse pogostejša. Sodeč po temah na nedavni znan-
stveni konferenci (Machaček, Hofmanova 2024) 
so moderne raziskave osredotočene še na analize 
preživetvenih strategij s pomočjo analize izotopov 
in lipidov (Machaček et al. 2024) ter (starodavne) 
DNK človeških (Lindstead, Salmela 2020) in ži-
valskih ostankov (Machaček et al. 2021). Omeniti 
velja še analize prsti (Štular, Lozić 2024) in velikih 
podatkov (Štular et al. 2022).
Vendar je arheologija Slovanov dandanes te-
oretsko izrazito polarizirana. Nekateri raziskovalci 
brezpogojno zavračajo možnost migracije Slovanov 
in celo njihov obstoj, medtem ko drugi še vedno 
uporabljajo metode iz 19. stoletja, pri čemer enačijo 
keramiko z etničnimi skupinami. Namen članka je 
osvetliti teorijo arheologije Slovanov in ponuditi 
rešitev za preseganje te polarizacije.
V članku najprej opišemo teoretični razvoj 
arheologije Slovanov od 19. do 21. stoletja v kon-
tekstu arheologije ter zgodovinopisja pozne antike 
in zgodnjega srednjega veka. Drugi del članka je 
namenjen razvoju teoretskega okvira. Trenutni 
okvir kritično predstavimo in predlagamo njegovo 
evolucijo. Nazadnje novi teoretski okvir uporabimo 
v študiji primera t. i. praške kulturne skupine, ki 
jo na novo opredelimo.
Članek ni namenjen bibliografskemu pregledu 
arheologije Slovanov, saj so to že obdelale številne 
nedavne študije (Pleterski 2013; Živković et al. 
2013; Šalkovský 2018; Kowalski 2019; Curta 2020; 
Filipec 2020).
ZGODOVINA RAZISKAV
Velika pripoved
Raziskave o preobrazbi “barbarske” Evrope v 
pozni antiki in zgodnjem srednjem veku so sprva 
temeljile na migracijskem modelu (Olsen 2002). 
Skupine prebivalstva so bile obravnavane kot stabil-
ne entitete, migracije pa kot glavni mehanizem 
sprememb (npr. Ratzel 1909). Po drugi svetovni 
vojni so nove paradigme v družboslovju, kot je 
instrumentalistični model, razširile razumevan-
je etnične identitete kot dinamičnega procesa, 
prilagojenega različnim okoliščinam (npr. Barth 
1969; Bentley 1987). V arheologiji je procesna 
paradigma, t. i. Nova arheologija, zavrnila mig-
racije kot razlagalni model in se osredotočila na 
notranje transformacije (npr. Adams et al. 1978). V 
devetdesetih letih je bil prevladujoči trend dekon-
strukcija velikih pripovedi (angl. grand narrative). 
Etnične identitete so bile razumljene kot fluidne 
(npr. Wenskus 1961; Heather 2010).
Etnogeneza
Etnogeneza je postala temeljni koncept razis-
kav pozne antike in zgodnjega srednjega veka v 
devetdesetih letih prejšnjega stoletja. Gre za razis-
kave nastanka in oblikovanja ljudstev na podlagi 
mitov o izvoru (npr. Geary 1988; Wolfram 1988). 
Poznejše študije so v razprave pritegnile teorije 
iz sociologije in kritične teorije, kar je privedlo 
do subtilnejšega razumevanja etnične identitete 
kot posledice socialnih interakcij (npr. Pohl 1998; 
Goffart 1998).
Trenutni trendi
Trenutne teorije poudarjajo, da etnične iden-
titete v materialni kulturi ni mogoče neposredno 
zaznati brez podpore pisnih virov (Knapp 2008; 
Pohl 2013). Etnogeneza je razumljena kot zapleten 
proces, v katerem so bile politične in družbene 
okoliščine ključne za oblikovanje identitetnih 
skupnosti (Reimitz 2015).
Sodobni pristopi v arheologiji vključujejo metode 
analize vzorcev podobnosti v materialni kulturi, pri 
čemer se upoštevajo tako izdelki kot sledi dejav-
nosti (Barceló et al. 2019). Kritiki tradicionalnih in 
interpretativnih pristopov (Hu 2012; Fazioli 2014) 
poudarjajo pomen analize tehnologij in metodo 
“skupnosti prakse” kot ključ za razumevanje so-
cialne identitete.
Razmislek o etnični identiteti v arheologiji Slovanov
Povzetek
282 Benjamin Štular
Arheologija Slovanov
Medtem ko je bil študij Slovanov do konca 
druge svetovne vojne metodološko podoben 
drugim raziskavam pozne antike in zgodnjega 
srednjega veka, se je po vojni večina slovanskih 
populacij znašla za t. i. železno zaveso, kar je 
vplivalo predvsem na to, kako so raziskave o 
Slovanih razumeli na globalnem zahodu (npr. 
Curta 2002, 2020; Heather 2010b). V arheološki 
praksi pa je vsaj ponekod marksistična teorija 
prevladovala le formalno, na primer v takratni 
Jugoslaviji (Novaković 2011, 2021).
Raziskave Slovanov v drugi polovici 20. stoletja 
so bile večinoma regionalne, kar je vplivalo na so-
razmerno zaprtost akademskih krogov v Nemčiji, 
na Poljskem in Češkoslovaškem ter v Jugoslaviji 
(pregledi v Fehring 2014; Jędrzejewska 2016; 
Gojda 1991; Štular, Pleterski 2018). Velik del teh 
raziskav se je osredotočal na iskanje Urheimata, 
domnevne pradomovine Slovanov, in na etnoge-
nezo (npr. Parczewski 1991; Dolukhanov 1996; 
Kazanski 1999). A od sredine devetdesetih let 
je bila etnična identiteta vse bolj razumljena kot 
fluiden proces, zlasti v luči novih teorij o jeziku 
in kulturi (Pleterski 1995; Mamzer 1999).
Prelomnico v študiju starih Slovanov je pomenil 
izid dveh knjig leta 2001. Barfordova (2001) je 
ponudila najobsežnejši pregled tematike pred-
stavnika iz vrst zahodnih raziskovalcev, vendar ni 
prinesla nove globalne hipoteze, Curtova (2001) 
pa je vpeljala dekonstruktivizem pisnih virov in 
etnografske analogije za reinterpretacijo virov o 
Slovanih. Po mnenju Curte so bili Slovani pasivna 
začasna tvorba, ki se je oblikovala šele v stiku z 
Bizancem. Poimenovanje Slovani naj bi bila domis-
lica bizantinskih piscev, jezik pa naj bi nastal kot 
lingua franca v avarskem kaganatu.
Številne kritike so pokazale, da je Curta gradil 
interpretacije na pomanjkljivih ali napačno ra-
zumljenih podatkih in na neutemeljenih inter-
pretacijah (pregledno v Lindstead, Salmela 2020). 
Poleg tega je bil v svojem pristopu kritikantski 
do predhodnih raziskovalcev. S tem je vnesel 
razdor v vedo, saj se raziskovalcem z modernim 
metodološkim aparatom in tistim z dostopom 
do relevantnih arheoloških podatkov ni uspelo 
povezati v plodovitem sodelovanju. Kljub po-
manjkljivostim je Curta pomembno prispeval 
k dekonstrukciji velike pripovedi o migraciji 
Slovanov kot enkratnem množičnem dogodku in 
k poudarjanju pomena metodologije.
TEORETSKI OKVIR
Arheološka kultura
Arheološka kultura ostaja osrednji koncept 
pri preučevanju materialne kulture in identitet 
preteklih družb kljub kompleksnosti teh identitet. 
Koncept arheološke kulture, ki ga povezujemo z 
avtorji, kot sta Kossina (1911) in Childe (1925), 
je bil razvit za raziskovanje ponavljajočih se tipov 
artefaktov in struktur iz določenega časa in pros-
tora. Sprva je bila arheološka kultura razumljena 
kot neposreden “odtis” etničnih skupin, danes pa 
koncept uporabljamo kot orodje za opis lastnosti 
materialne kulture, ki lahko odražajo kronologijo, 
tehnologijo, ekonomijo, socialne ali religiozne 
sisteme. Pri tem pa ni nujno, da se ti ujemajo z 
identitetnimi skupinami (Roberts, Linden (ur.) 
2011; Barceló et al. 2019).
Sodobne raziskave poudarjajo, da materialna 
kultura ni zgolj pasivni odsev družbenih identitet, 
temveč ima aktivno vlogo pri njihovem oblikovanju. 
Ta proces pogajanja družbenih identitet poteka v 
obliki odločitev o proizvodnji, uporabi in rokovan-
ju z artefakti (Fazioli 2014). Arheološka kultura 
je politetična, torej temelji na množici skupnih 
značilnosti, ki se skozi čas pojavijo kot vzorec 
podobnosti, kar omogoča preučevanje skupnosti 
prek vzorcev v arheološkem zapisu (Barceló et 
al. 2019).
V raziskavah starih Slovanov ostaja koncept 
arheološke kulture pomemben. Čeprav se pogosto 
opisuje kot teoretski anahronizem, je skoraj brez 
izjeme uporabljen kot interpretativno orodje. To je 
najbolj opazno pri interpretacijah tako imenovane 
praške kulturne skupine, ki se v istih razpravah 
pojavlja v dvojni vlogi: najprej kot predmet te-
oretske kritike in nato kot orodje za interpretacijo 
materialnih ostankov (npr. Curta 2001, 2020; Pohl 
2018; Heather 2010a).
Habitus
Raziskovalci, ki koncept arheološke kulture štejejo 
za anahronizem, se spoprijemajo z izzivom, kako 
materialno kulturo povezati z določenimi skupi-
nami in situacijami. Številni se pri tem opirajo na 
Bourdieujevo teorijo prakse in koncept habitusa 
(Austin, Thomas 1990; Jones 1997; Matthews 2001). 
Bourdieu je opredelil habitus kot medsebojno 
delovanje med družbeno strukturo in subjektivno 
izkušnjo posameznika, kjer se družbene strukture 
283Razmislek o etnični identiteti v arheologiji Slovanov
odražajo v praktičnih akcijah, ki reproducirajo 
in sooblikujejo te strukture.Pomembno je, da je 
habitus neločljivo povezan s svojim kontekstom, 
ki ga opisujeta koncepta polje in kapital (Bourdieu 
1977, 1990). Enako pomembno je zavedanje, da 
je bil koncept razvit za preučevanju sodobnih 
vertikalnih družbenih struktur, natančneje, za 
preučevanje vpliva družbene razslojenosti na 
francoski šolski sistem.
Habitus opisuje globoko zasidrane navade in 
dispozicije, ki so rezultat življenjskih izkušenj, 
poleg tega pa ima ključno vlogo pri oblikovanju 
etničnih razlik (Knapp 2008). Čeprav je koncept 
habitusa v arheologiji koristen za analizo druž-
benih praks, je njegova uporaba omejena zaradi 
kompleksnosti in specifičnih historičnih okoliščin, 
kar onemogoča njegovo polno vključitev v študije 
o etnični identiteti (Naum 2006).
Koncept habitus se v arheoloških raziskavah 
uporablja pogosto, vendar večinoma izolirano 
od konceptov polje in kapital. Zato je zreduciran 
na opazovane kulturne navade brez povezave z 
družbenimi strukturami, posledično je rezultat 
vertikalno (npr. status) in ne horizontalno (npr. 
etnična identiteta) razlikovanje (npr. Pohl 2018; 
Dzino 2010).
Arheološka kultura ali habitus?
Koncept habitus se ne zdi primeren za splošno 
uporabo v arheologiji, saj je uporaben le v specifičnih 
zgodovinskih okoliščinah in arheoloških zapisih.
Koncept arheološke kulture je bolj uporaben, 
vendar ga je treba na novo opredeliti. Arheološ-
ko kulturo v tej študiji definiramo kot rezultat 
naučenega vedenja, ki se reproducira v določeni 
družbeni skupini. Ta skupina je funkcionalno 
povezana z doseganjem določenih ciljev in orga-
nizirana okoli praktičnih interesov. V arheološkem 
zapisu se arheološka kultura izraža v politetičnih 
vzorcih podobnosti materialne kulture, ki jih ni 
mogoče reducirati na en sam atribut (npr. praški 
kulturni asemblaž in ne samo praška keramika).
Arheološka kultura predstavlja družbeno identi-
tetno skupino, ki lahko sovpada z etnično skupino. 
Skupna praksa, izražena v arheološki kulturi, je 
lahko sestavni del oblikovanja etnične identitete, 
vendar arheologija sama po sebi ne more v celoti 
opredeliti etničnih skupin. To lahko dokažemo 
le z dodatnimi viri (npr. sočasni pisni viri), ki 
te prakse jasno povezujejo z določeno etnično 
identiteto.
ŠTUDIJSKI PRIMER:
ETNIČNA IDENTITETA SLOVANOV?
Horizontalna distinkcija:
Utiguri, Kutriguri in Slovani
Najstarejši pisni viri o identiteti Slovanov iz-
virajo iz 6. stoletja ter opisujejo interakcije med 
Utiguri, Kutriguri in Slovani na območju spodnjega 
Podonavja. Iz dopisovanja med Justinijanom in 
Sandilkhom (Menander, ur. Blockley 1985), kaga-
nom Utigurov, izvemo, da so ti svojo identiteto 
razumeli kot skupni jezik, bivalno kulturo, nošo, 
način preživljanja ter družbene mreže. Ker so bili 
Utiguri, Kutriguri in Slovani enakovredni sosedi 
v spodnjem Podonavju v 6. stoletju, to pomeni, 
da so Utiguri naštete kriterije uporabljali tudi za 
razlikovanje od sosedov Slovanov. Ker pa je etnično 
razlikovanje vedno obojestransko, lahko sklepamo, 
da so tudi Slovani uporabljali iste kriterije. 
Iz tega študijskega primera smo izpeljali tri 
ugotovitve:
1. Utiguri in Kutriguri so bili del enotne arhe-
ološke kulture z enotno etnično identiteto.
2. Horizontalna razmejitev med skupinami v 6. 
stoletju je vključevala iste kriterije, ki so oblikovali 
etnično identiteto starih Slovanov.
3. Arheološka kultura ostaja ključni raziskovalni 
pripomoček za preučevanje teh razlik v arheološ-
kem zapisu.
Praška kulturna skupina
Praška kulturna skupina, oziroma natančneje 
asemblaž praške kulture (angl. Prague culture 
assemblage), je bila identificirana na širokem 
območju, ki vključuje Češko, Slovaško, Nemčijo, 
Ukrajino, Hrvaško in Slovenijo. Njene glavne 
značilnosti, ki pa se praviloma ne pojavljajo skupaj, 
so: ročno izdelane posode z nizkimi navpičnimi 
robovi, bivalna kultura v neutrjenih naseljih ob 
rekah, zemljanke s kamnitimi pečmi in grobišča 
z maloštevilnimi žganimi pokopi (npr. Profantová 
2012; Profantová in Profant 2020).
Praška kulturna skupina je ključna za razumevanje 
širjenja Slovanov v 6. stoletju. V skladu s predstavljenim 
teoretskim okvirom odraža sekundarno, relacijsko 
in notranjo skupino ljudi, ki se je definirala skozi 
materialno kulturo. Kljub temu ni dovolj dokazov, 
da bi ta kultura sama po sebi opredelila Slovane kot 
etnično identiteto po kriterijih dunajske historične 
šole, saj manjkajo ustrezni pisni viri.
284 Benjamin Štular
Pomagamo si lahko z nedavno arheološko anali-
zo, ki je z uporabo strojnega učenja in naprednih 
prostorskih analiz dokazala dve fizični migraciji 
v Vzhodne Alpe med letoma okoli 500 in 700 n. 
št. (Štular et al. 2022). Študija je zaključila, da 
so imigranti, imenovani Alpski Slovani, govorili 
slovanski jezik in imeli specifično genetsko poreklo 
(ki ga delijo z vsemi modernimi govorci slovanskih 
jezikov). Prva migracija v Pomurje in Podravje 
sovpada z najdišči, opredeljenimi kot praška kul-
turna skupina (Pavlovič 2015, 2017). To pomeni, 
da so prebivalci Pomurja in Podravja v 6. stoletju 
imeli skupno bivalno kulturo, nošo, način preživl-
janja (kar vemo na podlagi arheološke materialne 
kulture) ter jezik in družbene mreže (kar vemo na 
podlagi študije velikih podatkov). Takšna definicija 
pa natančno ustreza opisu horizontalne razmejitve 
v spodnjem Podonavju v 6. stoletju med Kutriguri 
in Utriguri na eni ter Slovani na drugi strani.
ZAKLJUČEK
Raziskovanje starih Slovanov, podobno kot 
raziskovanje pozne antike in zgodnjega srednjega 
veka, je v 19. stoletju postavilo migracije in etnično 
identiteto v ospredje. Kljub dekonstruciji velikih 
pripovedi in koncepta etnične identitete ta fokus 
ostaja, čeprav je preveč prepleten z zgodovinopis-
jem in pogosto neprimeren za arheologijo. Ta 
lahko namreč le izjemoma neposredno dokazuje 
etnično identiteto, zato se pogosto znajde v senci 
zgodovinopisja in genetskih raziskav. 
Vendar arheologija lahko prevzame svojo 
vlogo, če se ponovno osredotoči na raziskovanje 
arheoloških kultur. Pokazali smo, da so ljudje, ki 
so živeli v praški kulturni skupini, tvorili sekun-
darno, relacijsko skupino, ki se je horizontalno 
razlikovala od drugih po jeziku, bivalni kulturi, 
oblačenju, načinu preživljanja in družbene mre-
že. To je arheološka definicija etnične identitete 
Slovanov v specifičnem kontekstu sredine 6. 
stoletja, ki kaže na obstoj skupinske zavesti teh 
ljudi – ta je bila bolj trdna, kot predvidevajo 
teorije o fluidni identiteti.
Zaključujemo, da mora arheologija starih 
Slovanov opustiti neproduktivne razprave o 
identiteti, kot jo definirajo družboslovni koncepti 
za preučevanje sedanjosti, in se osredotočiti na 
preučevanje preteklosti v okviru, ki ga omogoča 
arheološki zapis. Poudarek naj bo na vprašanjih 
“kaj?”, “kdaj?”, “kje?” in – če je mogoče – “zakaj?”. 
Odgovor na vprašanje “kdo?”, kot ga opredeljujejo 
sodobne družboslovne vede, pa ostaja zunaj dosega 
arheološkega zapisa.
EPILOG
Sodobna historiografija priznava nezmožnost 
objektivnega spoznavanja preteklosti. Preteklost 
ni odkrita, temveč jo ustvarjajo in predstavljajo 
zgodovinopisci, ki dejavno sodelujejo pri njenem 
oblikovanju (Munslow 2001). Interpretacije preteklo-
sti tako razkrivajo ne samo raziskovano preteklost, 
temveč tudi čas, v katerem so bile ustvarjene. Kot 
so raziskovalci 19. stoletja samoumevno sprejemali 
obstoj močne in nespremenljive etnične identitete 
zaradi lastnega pogleda na svet, raziskovalci 21. 
stoletja o tej identiteti dvomimo zaradi našega 
sodobnega pogleda na svet.
Strinjamo pa se z Barceló et al. (2019), da je izraz 
etnične identitete odvisen od okoliščin, vendar 
ima etnična identiteta tudi neločljivo zgodovinsko 
komponento. Če bi bila določena zgolj na podlagi 
subjektivnih prepričanj posameznika, bi postala 
nekoristna kategorija, kar bi omogočilo zlorabe, kot 
je etnično čiščenje. Arheološka preučitev etnične 
identitete mora biti bolj odporna proti ponarejanju 
zgodovine, kot je danes.
Benjamin Štular
ZRC SAZU
Novi trg 2
SI-1000 Ljubljana
benjamin.stular@zrc-sazu.si
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1474-7183
The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (research projects 
No. N6-0317 and J6-50193).
Članek je nastal v okviru projektov (št. N6-0317 in J6-50193), ki ju financira Javna agencija za znanstvenoraziskovalno 
in inovacijsko dejavnost Republike Slovenije.